This young fellow looped his M3 in front of me at Thunderhill. If you watch, I’m the last car that goes by before the video ends (the green 675LT). I have to say that it looks a lot less worrisome from his perspective than it looked when I was heading directly towards him!
I’ve never driven on a track, can you explain what happened there? the video makes it look like the car just started bouncing as if over rough pavement.
He put two wheels off on the outside of the track. If he’d kept his stability control on, he’d have been fine… but PROS DON’T USE ESC YO
I think you meant “BROS”… don’t you ESC yo.
In my circles , ‘ looping ‘ means rolling the vehicle over , as in rubber skyside up .
-Nate
The driver turned in too late, missed the apex and probably lifted a wee bit when it became clear what was happening. It was pretty consequence-free for a turn 8 spin at Thunderhill. The unlucky ones finish somewhere on the hill to the right side of the turn…possibly upside down. Oddly enough, I had my first-ever turn 8 spin in the neon exactly one year ago yesterday. I finished in the grass to the inside, right side up, maybe 50 yards from the apex.
Never driven at thunderhill, but this makes sense to me. At 0:07, you can see his hands start making huge movements and at 0:08, he is steering into a skid which is consistent with lifting off and the back getting light.
His re-entry to the track seems a lot more dangerous than the excursion he took off of it.
Jack - what should he have done once he went off?
He should have continued in a straight line until he was traveling at a low speed and the track was clear behind him.
It was sheer luck that the two cars behind him didn’t hit him. The Cayman that was directly behind him swerved off 75 feet into the grass.
I assume that by convention and rule he was under no obligation to check if the Cayman was ok?
I don’t think he knew the Cayman was anywhere around him. He was a nice kid but like most California trackday drivers he had very small eyes, so to speak.
I don’t mean to be rude, but I am also interested in the answer to his question if the driver did realize that other driver’s mishap was his fault… Would it raise too many safety issue to pull off and give a thumbs up?
In general, when you’re on track you should make sure that you’re doing the right thing first. The corner workers are there to look after other drivers. The scene in “Driven” where they drag they guy out of the car is what you SHOULD NOT DO
Young, racing suit and gloves, M3, I am pretty sure that is racist.
AHAHAHA
Yes, he was Asian, but when I say “small eyes” I mean he probably wasn’t looking very much and didn’t see very much. That’s common in Cali track rats of all ethnicities.
Called it! Wait, does that make me racist?
Everybody’s racist now.
He just wasn’t comfortable enough on the grass to ride it out and stabilize the car.
I suspect he hasn’t done many highway passes with two wheels on the dirt shoulder.
I’m glad the Cayman was able to avoid him.
Once saw Randy Pobst go off-track in that exact place while instructing in someone else’s Porsche. He never lifted - just pinned the throttle through 100′ of grass-mowing, then came back on track at a gentle angle. The difference between amateurs and pros…
To be fair, Randy has a long history of fucking up other people’s cars. I’ve only had him as a teammate twice: once at Compass360 where he ran the Civics into the curbs in the Climbing Esses even though we were all told not to do that because the balljoints couldn’t take it, and once for AER where he shortcut Turn 1 so hard he ripped the muffler off the car, all in the service of being 0.2s quicker than me and 0.7s quicker than Travis Okulski.
Full disclosure, I’ve never tracked a car, but I am interested in learning. That said, here’s my question: He messed up well before the spin, right? Why was he fighting the car so much prior to running to the outside of the track? Did he enter the turn prior to the spin to fast or in the wrong position?
“Too fast” I should say. I promise, I’m probably not an idiot.
I think he was concentrating more on how fast he could push the car and not enough on his track awareness.
To be fair, it’s a problem every driver faces. You know you could go faster because you haven’t gone off yet. So you nerve yourself up to push harder and in doing so, you space out a bit on your fundamentals. Which is what happened here. His hands are jerky, the nose of the car is darting around, and I suspect he target-fixated on his corner exit instead of where he needed to be after that.